Fair Exchange: Marketing rollercoaster never slows down

by Erna George (@edgeo23) While there are many specialisation areas within marketing, for the most part, brand-manager roles at their core require strong ‘general management skills’ to deliver a profitable mix, in addition to maintaining a strong connection to the external world to understand consumer needs and behaviours. Balancing these has become more challenging in this complex time — making shareholders, internal and external stakeholders, as well as your consumers, happy is an active performance that requires excellence at basics and innovative approaches.

All the balls in the air

Why am I writing about this? I submitted this article late as, over the preceding weeks, I’d been focused on finalising the marketing contribution to the next horizon business strategy and translating this into brand plans. At the same time, business as usual doesn’t come to a halt, plus there’s the pressure of ad-hoc projects and delivering required growth over the quarter. To do this, one has to develop a keen view on past performance and its drivers, as well as a view on growth opportunities based on consumer demand, in order to finalise a distinct approach to win in market. Many have access to similar data; it’s the thinking time given to applying this data that unlocks potential. Prioritising this future potential while still delivering current launches, run-outs on discontinued items, pack changes for some nutritional update, managing consumer complaints on low stocks of their favourite product and just getting the monthly budget done can be a nightmare!

In order to manage (not simply juggle) all the balls in the air requires a strong commitment to the objectives. The balance must come in judging which areas require 80% effort and which require more. Get it over your heart that, in some things or at some time, good enough is enough — this is tough to deal with.

In my opinion, if you’ve spent enough time developing a strong strategy at the outset (with some checkpoints to stress-test it every now and then), then you must get on with delivering against this. A strong foundation and solid strategy may be applied across most channel or new approaches. Re-questioning strategy on a regular basis is destructive. While not being relevant is a sure-fire way to lose market share, being desperate is in my view the most-reliable method to kill a brand over time. Fixing relevance is manageable. Resurrecting brands? Not so easy. Marketing teams with strong problem-solving and lateral-thinking skills — key skills — will allow for flexibility to respond with greater precision. With this team in place, focus on delivering your strategy in full before haphazardly darting from pillar to post.

Challenge

This challenge of being distracted by a shiny new toy or trend may impact internal and customer perceptions. A competitor’s new campaign or product launch via a ground-breaking new channel might drive frustration or panic when seen by the CEO or head of sales, causing a flurry of questioning emails. Managing these internal concerns and points of view from multiple stakeholders (aka internal politics) is yet another key area marketing must manage to maintain focus. While we must stay open to new possibilities and continuous learning, prioritising focus areas is vital, given limited resources time, people and funds.

These limited resources, driven by our current economic reality, means that teams are leaner than before as businesses have to manage costs. Budgets are more pragmatic, yet the growth targets aren’t as modest. The pressure to deliver short- and long-term growth will not dissipate. Balancing a long-term view with the ‘craziness’ of daily shifts and business as usual, given nothing happens in an iterative way, may feel like chaos. And we all know the consequence of trying to juggle too much at once — the likelihood of dropping one or two balls. Therefore, we have to make choices to manage and create the focus for success. Sometimes these will be less than optimal but, if you’re in tune with the market and keep the brand roots and strategy at the core, you’re likely to be mostly right.

Tips

To stay on track and avoid or manage the distractions:

Prioritise the long-term and spend enough brain space on strategy-development sessions, as this is your foundation

Be brilliant at the basics, such as project management, and have brilliant agency partners for support

Keep focus on the objective but be open to possibilities on the execution, as that which worked once may not work again

Don’t be too hard on yourself, either. Take a deep breath and keep going; the rollercoaster is not slowing down.

After starting at Unilever in a classical marketing role, Erna George (@edgeo23) explored the agency side of life, first as a partner at Fountainhead Design, followed by the manic and inspiring world of consultancy at Added Value. She has returned to client-side, leading the marketing team in the Cereals, Accompaniments & Baking Division at Pioneer Foods. Her monthly “Fair Exchange” column on MarkLives concerns business relationships and partnerships in marketing and brandland.

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